Widow Basquiat

by Jennifer Clement

  Suzanne has hepatitis. She cannot lift up her arms.

  Jean-Michel sits beside her; he kisses and licks one of her arms.

  “Beautiful arms,” he says. “Venus, I have to paint your arms.”

  He takes a blue marker out of his pocket and paints on Suzanne’s arm. He paints her humerus, ulna, radius and carpus. He writes “animal cell” on the inside of her wrist. He draws a ring around her finger.

  “Now you are my wife,” he says.

  MODENA, ROME, FLORENCE AND VENICE

  Jean-Michel, Suzanne and Kai Eric travel to Italy. They stay in the houses of gallery owners and rich art collectors. Jean-Michel finds drugs wherever he goes. He and Suzanne are very happy.

  One day in Venice, Jean-Michel says he has not listened to Charlie Parker in two weeks. He says that if he doesn’t listen to Charlie Parker he will go crazy. He says he needs to hear the music or he will not be able to breathe. He says that Italy is just like the United States and everywhere else: there are no black men in paintings in museums.

  “This is why I paint,” he says. “To get black men into museums.”

  They spend all day trying to find a Charlie Parker tape but have no luck. Jean-Michel ends up buying some opera arias sung by Maria Callas. When he gets back to New York he plays the music so loud everyone can hear it outside on the street. People walk past looking up at his windows. He paints “AAAAAAAAAA” onto his boards and canvases.

  THE HOSPITAL IS VERY WHITE

  When the fever begins she thinks it is the coke. When she starts to vomit she thinks it must be the heroin. She cannot stand up. She cannot sit down.

  “I feel like there is blood inside of me,” Suzanne says.

  Jean-Michel never goes to visit her at the hospital. The doctor says that she has pelvic inflammatory disease. He asks her who she has been sleeping with.

  Suzanne says, “Only my boyfriend.”

  The doctor says, “I’m sorry, but your boyfriend gave this to you.”

  He tells her to sleep. He says the IV is carrying the antibiotic into her body. He tells her she will feel better in six days. He tells her convalescence will take a month. He tells her she will never be able to have children.

  WITCHCRAFT, IT WORKS

  Jean-Michel tells Suzanne his mother has always been a kind of witch and knows everything about Haitian voodoo. He says that she learned this to protect herself. He says that she taught him how to do it too.

  He paints the words “GOLD” and “YEN” and paints coins into his paintings and then everyone wants to buy them.

  “See,” Jean-Michel says, rolling up eight one-hundred-dollar bills into his pocket, “it works.”

  I don’t know exactly how long I had been living there. Maybe about one year and a half. Things were really bad between us. He was doing so much coke and was extremely paranoid. Once I got really fed up and flushed an ounce down the toilet. Of course I was doing a lot of coke too but I just wanted it all to stop. I wanted us to be happy again like when I first moved in and we were not doing so many drugs.

  Things were really bad. We went days without speaking. I secretly started doing heroin because I couldn’t deal with coming down off five days of coke. Jean started staying out all night in the clubs. He went to Reggae Lounge a lot because Shenge worked there. I introduced them because I used to bartend at Berlin, which was attached to Reggae Lounge. Jean would do drugs all night there, sometimes for days on end, and slept with other women. This made me crazy but I tried not to show it.

  Anyway, the night we were supposed to go to Rome again for another show he didn’t come home all night. When he finally did come home I told him, “I’m fed up with this. I don’t sleep with anyone else. You would kill me if I did.”

  Then I said, “I am not going to Rome with you.”

  He flew into a rage and started breaking things. I was drinking tequila. It was only about ten a.m. I wasn’t supposed to be drinking because of the hepatitis. He picked up my glass of tequila and smashed it against the wall.

  “You are not supposed to be drinking!” he screamed. Then he started breaking other things in the room.

  I said, “Why are you so mad at me? You won’t let me breathe without asking your permission. I’ll just step aside and you can have your freedom to do whatever the fuck you want. I’m leaving. I have nothing. No money, nowhere to go, nothing. But I would rather be out on the street than to live like this.”

  Jean started packing for Rome. I served myself some more tequila. We did not speak to each other. Jean was shaking from coming down from a night of cocaine. Then he walked to the elevator to leave.

  He said, “We promised Rene that he could stay in the apartment while we were gone. Don’t leave the loft until I come back.”

  Then he handed me one thousand dollars.

  “If you need more money you can go to Annina’s and get it,” he said.

  I said, “I don’t need your money.”

  He threw the money on the floor and left.

  That night Rene Ricard took me to a party because I was so depressed.

  He said, “Don’t worry. Everything will be okay; you’ve just never stood up to Jean-Michel like that. It is the best thing you could have done.”

  While we were at the party Jean arrived. He wanted to know what I was doing at the party.

  Apparently he had gone to the airport with Annina and told her, “I can’t go—I have to go back and talk to Suzanne.” Annina was furious and left without him. Jean left the party and took another airplane to Rome. I went back home to the loft.

  Late that night, in the middle of the night, Rene started ringing the doorbell. I looked out the window and could see that he had brought one of those stickup kid tricks home. The kid looked like a thief so I ignored them and didn’t let them in.

  “You bitch! You bitch!” Rene yelled at me from the street.

  The next day Rene came over and he was furious.

  He said, “You weren’t even supposed to be here. You were supposed to be in Rome with Jean-Michel. That was a gorgeous guy from 10th Street I scored last night. You embarrassed me.”

  I said, “You can’t bring your stickup banshee boys here.”

  I went into the bathroom and lay down on the bathroom tiles. This was all just too much for me.

  Rene came in after a while and caressed my hair.

  “Please forgive me,” he said.

  Rene and I managed to live for about one week together without any major fights. One day the phone rang and it was Annina in Rome. She did not know where Jean was. She told me to go to her gallery and get some money and come to Rome immediately. I told her that I could not go, that Jean and I were in a big fight.

  I hung up the phone and asked Rene, “Where’s Jean?”

  He said, “You really want to know? She’s ten times more famous than you and she’s a model.”

  “Where is he?” I asked.

  Rene said, “They are in Japan and they are in love. And, the reason I am here is because Jean paid me to get you out of here.” I knew that this was a lie. But it still hurt. So, I left.

  SUITCASES AND OTHER BAGS

  She is very quiet. In one suitcase she places her fishnet stockings, polka-dot skirt, dresses, shoes and winter coat. In another bag she packs her passport and plastic jewelry. She takes a small bag of coke out of the refrigerator and hides it inside her hair, fastening it with hairpins. She leaves the one thousand dollars that Jean-Michel gave her in the loft. She leaves her typewriter, her coat and her hairbrush. She knows you must always leave your hairbrush behind— it’s voodoo.

  Outside she sits on the sidewalk with her bags all around her. Six punk, hip kids walk by and ask her what is wrong and she tells them, “My boyfriend doesn’t love me anymore. He has other girls. He is famous.”

  The boys take her to their house in Alphabet City. Suzanne sleeps on the couch and they give her American cheese sandwiches for four days. She gives them the coke that is hidden in her messy hair. They w
atch her take it out. They say she is a magician.

  One day she stands up and says, “Thank you, boys. I need to get a job.”

  She gets three jobs—working at a secondhand clothing store, an after-hours bar and typing scripts for Eric Mitchell, the underground filmmaker.

  One month later Suzanne goes back to the Crosby loft to pick up her typewriter. Jean-Michel is back. He is there with David Bowes, Fab 5 Freddy and some other friends. He looks thin and dirty. Suzanne walks past him to get her typewriter. Jean-Michel follows her.

  “Are you coming back? Come back. I couldn’t find you. Where were you? I told Rene to take care of you and not to let you leave,” Jean-Michel says.

  She knows she cannot come back. Inside her arms she feels that she can carry a piano. She can carry a truck. She knows she can walk, that her legs won’t fail her. As the elevator door closes she can hear Jean-Michel breaking things.

  Maybe it is the day to go buy some heroin … The girl takes a cab past Houston Street and buys some dope. She opens the package in the cab, bends over and sniffs it off of her lap. She thinks about the words she loves: rabbit, rain, Rome, Rammellzee, rocket. She giggles to herself when she thinks that dope makes her mind wind up and around alliterations. Her neck and hands feel warm like fur.

  A few weeks later she runs into Jean-Michel when she is buying some dope on the Lower East Side. Jean-Michel takes her for a ride in his limousine. They sniff the dope in the car. Jean-Michel says, “Burroughs was a junkie, Parker was a junkie … it is the road to genius.” At a red light he gives one hundred dollars to a skinny black bum.

  “Do you want some money, Venus?” he asks Suzanne.

  “No. I never have wanted your money, Jean,” she says.

  “I know,” he answers.

  COMING BACK FOR GOOD AGAIN AND AGAIN

  Jean-Michel is made for the night, like a mole. The daylight hurts, the sun hurts, but at night he is transformed into a magician, a Merlin with everything wound up tight and sparkling. Nights are for drugs. Drugs are for nights. In daylight he looks for his shadow and crawls up inside it.

  Jean-Michel stands at her doorstep. Suzanne says, “No, no, no, you can’t come back.” He is disheveled. One of the soles of his shoes flaps open and she can see his toes. He is unshaven. He brings no belongings with him. He does not expect her to take him in. Like all stray animals, he knows he will not be taken in.

  I always took him in. I’d convince myself that I wouldn’t but then he’d appear with the resigned look of someone accustomed to being turned away—a boy without a friend.

  When I’d take him back, which was happening all the time, I’d make dinner for him and run out and buy a really good bottle of wine, even if it took away half of my rent money. I loved to spoil him and he always appreciated expensive things, as if consuming them would make him valuable.

  I would light a candle and sit him at the table. He would look at the bottle of wine for a long time.

  On one of these occasions we sat together quietly and I did not know what to say to him since this had happened so many times now. We felt a bit like strangers and I made some idle chitchat and asked if his paintings were selling well. He said that he was making tons of money now. Jean drew himself up straight and said, “I am famous just like I told you I would be.”

  We talked for some time of how he had always painted and how as a child he had dreamed of being a cartoonist. “The only thing that has ever interested me,” he said, “is a blank page.”

  That time, for the first time, he also talked about his childhood. He told me how he had always been in trouble and had gone to so many different schools. He also told me about the time he had gone to live in Puerto Rico with his father, when he was eight and after his parents were divorced.

  I guess he was lost without his mother. His mother had taken him to art museums and used to paint with him in the afternoons with both of them lying on the floor on their stomachs. She used to paste his drawings up around the house. The loss of his mother had left him with a great sadness. Even though she was now close by at the institution she was far away from him in his mind.

  The next morning I gave him an apple to take with him as he was leaving. He said good-bye to me and then five minutes later he came back to the apartment and said good-bye to me again.

  “You are my best friend,” he said. It was so sad. That is something children say in kindergarten.

  THE VENUS XEROXES

  Jean-Michel draws Venus and writes “VENUS” on dozens of pieces of paper. He xeroxes the papers, tears them up and hands them out to friends and strangers on the street. This is how he symbolically announces his breakup with Suzanne. He also pastes these Venuses on some of his paintings.

  One night Suzanne goes out to the Roxy and finds Jean-Michel with Madonna. Suzanne throws herself at Madonna and starts pulling her hair, scratching and punching her.

  “You are with my boyfriend!” Suzanne says.

  Jean-Michel just laughs and laughs.

  Later he tells Suzanne, “Well, you beat her up just like a Puerto Rican girl.”

  Later he paints A Panel of Experts. In this painting Suzanne “Venus” and Madonna are two stick figures having a catfight. On the collage he crosses out the word “Madonna.”

  “Why did you do that?” Suzanne asks.

  “Because you won, Venus,” Jean-Michel says.

  Jean took me to a party at Julian Schnabel’s house. Jean got all dressed up but he would not let me get dressed up. Jean made me wear his long-sleeve overalls that had paint all over them. I was embarrassed. All the other women were all dressed up and looking very beautiful.

  Jean laughed at Schnabel’s work. He thought it was a joke. He envied how Schnabel was, how powerful and rich he was. He had no respect for his work but he did respect how Schnabel could propel himself to such a position in the art world. Jean was very conscious and fascinated with people who understood how to do this. He had great respect for people who could improve their lot in life. I think that this is also what he loved about Madonna. And also why he loved Andy Warhol. Jean greatly respected Warhol because he was so famous and had such an interesting life and because he hung out with so many famous people. But deep down Jean thought he was a much more talented artist than any of them. Jean really believed that he was a great artist.

  As for Keith Haring, they were friends. Jean went back and forth with him: friends and not friends. Jean had very mixed feelings about Keith’s work. He loved it that Keith gave the graffiti artists an open door. But, at the same time, he felt that Keith’s work was a bit contrived. Jean once said to me that it was “formula art” and that Keith had found a good thing, that he just did it over and over again. Jean resented it, though—that it took a white guy to bring graffiti to SoHo. Keith hung around with black and Puerto Rican graffiti artists and had a lot of them collaborate on his work, especially a guy called LA2. It was Keith that really made the graffiti artists legitimate. I think his influence in this was greater than Jean’s.

  Jean was very nervous about how he appeared all the time and was always thinking of strategies. If Jean made the wrong move it was much more dangerous than if Keith made the wrong move. Jean was the first black to be seen as a legitimate artist in the white art world. He had to secure his own place before he could help the graffiti artists. This is why he did the Fun Gallery show. This gallery was owned by Patti Astor in the East Village. Jean had already shown his work in SoHo. He did this show to demonstrate his solidarity with the graffiti artists. It was also a very hip show. Jean would only put himself out for others if it also helped his own career.

  INSIDE A TELEPHONE BOOTH

  Suzanne spends a month living with friends and then moves back into her own apartment that she had sublet for a year. The place is covered with paintings Jean-Michel gave to Suzanne. She thinks it looks like a shrine. Even the refrigerator is covered with his doodles.

  She takes everything down. She throws some drawings and paintings out of
the window and they fall on the roof below. The next day someone cleans the roof and everything is thrown out.

  Suzanne makes up a spell. She places four “Venus” paintings in a plastic garbage bag. She buys a can of lighter fluid. It is midnight. She walks to Jean-Michel’s loft taking three steps at a time and then turning around three times. She does this until she gets there. It takes her an hour and makes her very dizzy.

  On the sidewalk in front of Jean-Michel’s loft she pours lighter fluid on the paintings and sets them on fire. It makes a small bonfire.

  Jean-Michel looks out of the window to the street below and yells, “Suzanne, what are you doing?”

  She hides inside a telephone booth.

  Jean-Michel yells out once more, “Suzanne, I can see you. Niña, what are you doing?”

  She does not answer. Her heart beats fast like a chicken heart. AAAAAAEEEEEEAAAAEEEE.

  L.A.

  The spells don’t work. The girl sleeps with ten different boys in two weeks and it doesn’t work. She kisses a girl at the Pyramid Club and nothing changes.

  Suzanne packs her clothes and puts her heroin inside her hair. Jean-Michel sends her a first-class ticket to L.A.